Although both deputies and the man who called to report the lights dancing in the sky observed them for more than 15 minutes, they could offer no explanation about what they were.

“One deputy, who has an extensive amount of military experience and has witnessed a lot of military maneuvers first hand, said he’d never seen anything like them,” Kramer said. “They could not explain what they were.”

A man who lives near Jeffrey Lake reported the lights in the sky to the 911 Center about 7:30 Nov. 21, according to an LCSO report. A dispatcher reported the call to on-duty deputies, who responded to the call.

Kramer said both deputies observed the lights first hand.

“The report says they first observed a blue light with a red tail fall out of the sky toward a field,” Kramer said. “It stayed stationary for a short time then disappeared.”

Kramer said the deputies observed lights that appeared to hover then take off in one direction or another. He said the deputies reported that they never saw more than three lights together at one time and that there was no sound coming from them.

Kramer said the deputies reported that the lights were “too fast to be helicopters and too agile to be jet aircraft.”

The lights were reported to be blue and white, according to Kramer.

The deputies also reported that one of the lights would occasionally drop directly down toward the earth and then suddenly rise up again into the sky.

The deputies observed the lights in the southern sky for about 15 minutes before they suddenly darted off and disappeared.

Kramer said one deputy managed to get a picture of the lights shot with a digital camera through his night vision goggles but that the pictures didn’t offer much evidence as they were too grainy and the lights appeared so small.

The man who reported the lights said he often watched military helicopters on maneuvers in the canyons during the summer but said it was nothing like the lights Nov. 21.

Others at Lake Maloney also reported seeing the unidentified lights in the eastern sky.

Dispatchers checked with Denver International Airport, which covers radar for this area, but they said the radar only monitored activity at 14,000 feet and above.

The deputies reported the lights were much lower than that in the sky.

Mike Sharkey, manager of the North Platte Regional Airport, said the dispatchers called him at home to see if he could shed any light on the mysterious lights but he said that Lee Bird Field has no radar and could offer no further information.

A spokesman for the National Weather Service office in North Platte said their radar rarely picks up any aircraft or UFOs. He said no one noticed anything unusual on their radar Nov. 21.

Kramer said he too could offer no explanation for the mysterious lights.

UFOs sighted over area for more than 53 years

Only one in 450 UFO sightings are ever reported, according to the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle Wash.

On any particular evening in the United States there are around 1,000 sightings of UFOs around the USA, including 100 close encounters with objects, 80 encounters with humanoids, and 15 reported abductions.

In the U.S. there are now living around one million people who believe they have seen saucer occupants, and over 150,000 who believe they have been abducted.

There have been 252 UFO sightings reported in Nebraska, according to NUFORC.

NUFORC was founded in 1974 by noted UFO investigator Robert J. Gribble. The Center's primary function over the past two decades has been to receive, record, and to the greatest degree possible, corroborate and document reports from individuals who have been witness to unusual, possibly UFO-related events.

The center operates a telephone hotline that has operated almost continuously since 1974 and has processed more than 10,000 calls. Reports can also be filed on the center’s website.

The U.S. government took an interest in UFOs from 1947 to 1967 and the U.S. Air Force used its substantial base network to take reports and write them up in standardized formats. During this period there were also substantial report libraries accumulated by the private NICAP and AFPRO organizations in the United States, the researcher Jacques Vallee, and other private organizations in Canada, Europe and Australia.

The official Condon Study of 1969 ended the U.S. government program of taking reports. Researchers at the private CUFOS group managed to acquire the final government-sponsored report database on mainframe data tapes.

It is from this data and other reports that we can report West Central Nebraska area UFO sightings:

• McPherson County - In April 1916 and again in August 1917, a flying disk was observed and reported by residents.

• North Platte, Aug. 23, 1955 – A woman reported that she had a close encounter with an unidentified craft and its occupants.

• Rural West Central Nebraska, Jan. 1, 1953 – A woman told her child, who was only 4-years old the night the incident happened, that they were traveling by car when a light came from the sky and lit up the area so bright that she could see every blade of grass if it were daylight. She told her daughter that the car stopped and they just sat there. She said she didn’t know how long but that the light left and she started the car again and drove them home. She remembered the incident and all the details at age 82.

• North Platte, April 25, 1964 – A meteor-like object was reported by numerous people. It was later determined to be an actual meteor.

• North Platte, June 17, 1978 – Numerous witnesses reported an object hovering in the sky for more than one hour at approximately 11 p.m. The witnesses made numerous police reports about the encounter.

• North Platte, Aug. 25, 1979 – Two friends were star gazing at 10:30 p.m. when one suddenly saw an object flying through the northern Milky Way. He reported it was nearly 60,000 feet in altitude and traveling due south. He said the object was dark with jagged edges and appeared to be the size of three football fields. Two other similarly shaped objects were traveling in a split formation behind the lead craft and four more followed those, the report said. All were traveling extremely fast. They bolted from the far northern view of the Milky to the south under 10 seconds. The friend pointed them out to his buddy who then saw them too. The report said they could distinguish them as separate because they could see the stars between objects.

• North Platte, July 17, 1980 – Two people who were attending a party at the skating rink were walking home a little after 10 p.m. and looked up about 30 degrees at the corner of Custer Avenue and West 13th Street. They reported spotting several rock-shaped objects with jagged edges flying across the sky. The objects went north to south and passed overhead silently, the report said. The pair watched the objects for about eight seconds until they vanished into a puffy white cloud. The report said one of the boys went home and told his parents what he saw but they were not the least but interested because they were watching Ronald Reagan giving his acceptance speech for nomination of the Republican Party for President that Thursday evening, which also happened to be the boy’s fathers birth date. He said he highly doubted anyone believed his story because he was only fourteen years old when it happened.

• North Platte, Oct. 19, 1981 – Objects were tracked by radar and sighted visually. Three multi-colored discs were observed by five witnesses.

• Sutherland, Nov. 15, 1983 – A Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputy was on patrol in the Sutherland area when he found some kids drinking beer. As the kids were dumping the beer at the deputy’s direction, one of them yelled, “Hey, what is that?” The deputy reported he looked toward the northwest and observed a craft floating above the ground. He reported the dark metallic craft was about 2,000 feet above the ground and about 1,200 feet away from him. He said the craft was moving slowly toward the south. The deputy reported the craft had rows of square objects that looked like windows but were dark. The deputy watched the craft move to the south and over the Village of Sutherland. He reported he called another deputy in the Wallace area and asked him to start heading north and see if he could catch it. Just then, the deputy said, three circles at the rear of the craft flashed a bright white and the craft sped up in the direction of the Gerald Gentleman Power Plant then veered to the southeast. The second deputy then reported he could see the craft and estimated it was going about 400 miles per hour towards Dickens. The craft was reported to be as long as a C5 Galaxy aircraft and twice as wide. He observed it for an estimated 15 minutes. He said he and the teens all felt the hair on their arms and legs stand up when they saw it.

• Maxwell, Nov. 15, 1984 – The man who reported this UFO said he was driving east down Hwy. 30 toward Maxwell taking a friend home at 6 p.m. on a cold, misty, rainy day. He said he did not like driving on that road as the trains on the track perpendicular to the road often had their front lights on bright. The man said he saw a light that he first thought was a train but quickly realized it was twice as high as it should have been. He said he and his friend went silent as they got closer and observed the light was coming from a football shaped craft floating above the railroad tracks. The light was on the front of the craft was pointing straight ahead and there was another he said he could not see at first pointing directly down onto the tracks. It also had several small colored lights at different areas on it. They stopped the car and got out, walking towards the craft as it approached. The passenger got back in the car and yelled for the driver to get in and drive off. But the driver stayed outside and observed the craft as it passed. He said there was no sound coming from the craft and it just glided over the tracks. They watched as it passed by and disappeared from sight into the mist. The man reported that he and his friend never could make sense of what they saw. He said the sighting took about five minutes but after dropping his friend off and driving back home, he learned he had been gone six hours. They reported the sighting to the Nebraska State Patrol.

• Gothenburg, July 15, 1996 – A man reported that he saw a red round flashing light similar to a taillight on an old car cross the night sky from the west horizon to the east horizon five to 10 times faster than any jet he had ever seen. He said it went from horizon to horizon in about 30 to 45 seconds and made absolutely no sound. The object was observed at 11:30 p.m. The same object was reportedly reported to a Denver radio station.

• Cozad, Sept. 18, 1998 – A licensed practical nurse reported a triangular shaped object, whose margins were unspecific, at 1:45 a.m. The night was clear and the star field exceptionally sharp. The trajectory was from north to south and there were no visible lights. “I am a trained observer by profession,” the nurse wrote in the report.

• Ogallala, July 22, 2000 – Three friends reported an enormous craft with multi-illuminated panels giving off shapes and colors “unlike anything they had ever seen.” They reported it rose on the western horizon and traveled to the eastern horizon. They observed it for about 25 minutes.

• Mullen, Nov. 19, 2002 – A couple reported that they observed brilliant lights moving at incredible speeds and doing strange maneuvers for four nights in a row. They reported that they got scared and observed the lights appearing to follow them until they reached town then shoot straight up into the sky about 11 p.m. They observed them for several hours one night and even videotaped the event.

• North Platte, Oct. 17, 2003 – A woman reported that he observed an aircraft apparently chasing a formation of yellowish and orange lights quite a bit bigger than the aircraft. The eastbound formation of lights accelerated and left the aircraft far behind, according to the woman. She observed the chase for about three minutes, she reported.

• Sutherland, July 26, 2004 – A man was cutting cross-country from Tryon and was on his way to Sutherland at 11:40 p.m. when he observed a needle nosed, triangular-shaped object in the sky. It appeared to be hovering halfway between Sutherland and Hershey. It soon began moving to the south very slowly. “I would say the object was about 300 yards long and 100 wide at the triangular front end. I continued to the south until I came onto the two-mile road north of Sutherland and turned to the east. I stopped and got out to get a better look. I heard a low-pitched hum, which seemed to be coming from the object which was heading south towards I-80 and Hwy. 30. It seemed to be moving about 3-5 miles per hour at about 1,000-foot altitude or so. It seemed to me it was about a mile or two away to the east. I watched this object for several minutes until it disappeared to the south and the lights of the rest area on I-80 interfered. I came on home and reported what I saw.” He reported that he observed the craft for 25 minutes.

• Hershey, Dec. 3, 2004 – A man was driving on Hwy. 30 when he noticed lights in the sky just south of the highway and east of Hershey. It appeared to be a rectangle that spun slowly counter clockwise and took about 10 seconds to make a complete revolution. It was drifting west. Suddenly, the rotation stopped and the craft began moving directly to the north. “At this point I had pulled off to the side of the road and got out of my truck. The lights were shaped in a Trapezoid formation with a spot light in the center that would come on intermittently. What ever this craft was it did not make the sounds that a helicopter makes. The only thing I heard was a low continued whooshing sound heavy on the osh part. I stood there for about four minutes watching this object light up the country side with a bright white circle until it was about a mile or so north then the craft shot straight up and out of site. The whole time I watched this craft it was about 700 feet above the ground and I also saw the normal passenger jet aircraft in the sky but they were traveling at their normal altitudes – 20,000 feet or so.”

• North Platte, June 29, 2007 – A man reported that as he walked toward his pickup truck, he looked up in the sky and saw three very bright lights moving in a triangular shape at 11:30 p.m. He reported the triangle moved to the north slowly. He said he then observed a fast moving plane fly under the lighted triangle. The UFO then shot straight up and disappeared, the man reported.

• Hershey, Nov. 2, 2007 – A man reported that he was walking to his truck when he looked into the sky and noticed an airplane flying from west to east. He said then he noticed a very bright light in the sky further “toward Zenith” from the plane. He said he quickly checked the Constellations to orient himself. He reported the light four times the size of Venus. He observed it for about 20 seconds when its intensity began dissipating. He said he could see a round ball in the center of the light. He said he went back into his house, saw it was 10:34 p.m. and filed his report.

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